Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft?
Given most comments on Slashdot, it would appear that anyone with even a slight knowledge of computers hates Microsoft. An article on CoolTechZone, though, argues that not everyone should dismiss Microsoft outright. According to Varun Dubey, Linux is over-rated, Macs aren't worthy and Windows deserves respect and some love. From the article: 'What has Microsoft given us? It has given us Windows, sure, it was buggy earlier and a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind) but it was a pioneering effort. No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered. Sure, Mac OS was a lot prettier but then it cost the moon and the stars along with both your arms and legs.
Given most human opinion, it would appear that anyone with even a slight sense of smell hates the smell of human poo. An article on PooEatersInc, though, argues that not everyone should dismiss the smell and taste of human poo outright. According to Ilov Poo, dog poo is over-rated, cow dung isn't worthy and pure human excrement deserves respect and some love. From the article: 'What has shit given us? It has given us food, sure, it is runny sometimes and the reliability leaves something to be desired (constipation springs to mind) but nothing tastes like a bowl of steaming poo in the morning. No one is even close to the ease of use that poo offers - out of the toilet bowl and into your cereal bowl. Sure, bird droppings are a lot prettier but then it is hard to collect and often leaves stains on your clothes .
"Radiation exposure is certainly one of the major problems facing future interplanetary space travellers," says Murdoch Baxter, founding editor of the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. "Unless we can develop instantaneous time and space transfer technologies like Dr Who's TARDIS."
...like Star Trek's Transporter room. While we're brainstorming on alternate solutions, developing radiation-resistant superhumans who do the interplanetary space exploration for us doesn't sound like a bad idea either.
I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot
OMFG imagine if M$ patent3d teh emot1c0n5!!! th4t wud so SUXXORRZZZ SO B4D!!111!! LOLZZZ WHAT wa5 1 THinKING!!! M$ wudnt do that because that would p1ss of everybuddy and their AOL BUDDIE5 SO B4D!!!
I wholly agree that this is a very cool development, but some credit has to go to this guy who developed it first with the Google API.
And I find his GUI better than Google's. It's slicker, and the ability to adjust the transparency (slider at the bottom) is quite innovative. As is also the ability to move the foreground or background and have the other align itself accordingly.
I would've typed in an almost identical comment had I not bothered to RTFC.
No matter how secure the core Firefox code is, it is all meaningless with the current extensions model. With the current model (or lack of one) a malicious (or plain buggy) extension can turn Firefox into a bigger threat than IE.
From my understanding, Firefox extensions aren't restricted from doing I/O or listening on sockets/etc. What's to prevent somebody from writing a seemingly harmless extension which silently dumps all activity logs or other information to an outside listener?
A Java type sandbox model, while a reasonable analogy would IMHO be overly restrictive for extensions, which need to be more closely tied into Firefox than most Java applets need to be to do all the cool things that they currently do (eg: the Tabbrowser Extension).
To paraphrase Martin Niemöller's famous quote:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak outbecause I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
First they DRM'd the software and I did not speak out because I used non-DRM'd software.
Then they came DRM'd the OS and I did not speak out because I stuck to non-DRM'd OS.
Then they DRM'd the firmware and I did not speak out because I used non-DRM'd firmware.
Then they DRM'd the hardware and there was no where to run my non-DRM'd firmware, OS and software.
LOL...heard your wife reply to my message : "Hope your family doesn't get Slashdotted" as "Too Late". Heard your kids too. Man, after all these years on the Internet, live audio/video/remotelights switches are all still cool.
/tinfoil hat on
Maybe it's just due to the abundance of spyware that disguises themselves as browser toolbars (I cringe everytime I see a MySearch toolbar running on an acquaintances IE), but it's more due to the fact that integrating my open-source browser with a proprietary piece of software is apt to open up all kinds of privacy issues like making me more vulnerable to a single entity (in this case Google) tracking all my online activity, searches, form information, etc.
I know Google tracks and logs every search query by IP address, but it's these persistent session pieces like the GMail cookies, "Personalized results" etc, that I find scarier. And what's more, a large number of people tend to use their full names as Email IDs (moreso for an attractive email service like GMail, which can be used as a formal email account for most purposes), which gives Google a way to directly map People Names to Google Searches.
You young 'uns and your fancy schmancy "Hybrid Telephony". Back in my day, we didn't need these teensie Mobile Telephones" with their fancy "Bluetooth connections" to talk. All we had was our strong manly voices and a favorable wind ter carry it across.
I remember the day when my old Missus had 'er first baby. I didn't go around dialling fancy numbers in any fancy telephone. Just walked up the hill, hollered for the midwife and walked back up home. No sirre, no fancy "Hybrid Telephony" for us back then, and we loved it.
Nothing more, nothing less. People've been doing it for more than a decade. It's only now that Joe Sixpack and the media discovered it as another amazing thing that the Internets could do, and starting hyping/buzzwording the crap out of it.
Even companies are jumping on the "blog bandwagon" by starting "personal blogs" of their upper management. For what purpose, I cannot ascertain, except probably as an advertising avenue.
I hate it when CNN or some major news channel reports "happenings" from the "Blog world" or "Blogosphere" and waste my time, the viewers' and their own....time that could be better spent on reporting something worthwhile (not that they would anyway).
Continuing further in handing your ass to you,
Just a suggestion, and I really am trying to be constructive here
Abusing an opponent in an argument does not construe as being "constructive" in my book. Neither does making strawman suggestions about the opponent's lack of "comprehension and discourse". Welcome to my foes list.
I guess I blame India for short-sheeting the buying public claiming to provide "equal" services for far less cost...It's disingenuous at best, downright unethical otherwise.
You really think India is "to blame" for being a poorer country than the US of A and the other Western countries? That and the resulting favorable Exchange Rate is the reason why it's a good deal for Corporations to move their operations to India.
What do you propose they do? Artificially inflate the value of the Rupee, so that it's at par with the US Dollar so their population doesn't "compete unfairly" for American jaabs, and have the resulting rise in the cost-of-living starve out more than 50% of the population who don't earn more than a few Rupees a month?
The whole reason behind the so called "Outsourcing" is the *favorable Exchange Rate* as another poster noted further up in this thread. Unlike the popular notion, the standard-of-living of software developers is *not* lower in the US and China - infact they're among the highest paid technical workers in the market.
I suggest you blame the Corporations who want to put their profits above their ethics, rather than painting blaming a billion people with your "disingenuous/unethical" brush just because they were unfortunate (or fortunate - perspectives may differ) enough to be born into a poorer country.
Wonder what made Yahoo decide on choosing these two terms as ends of the spectrum. IMHO, it excludes a variety of other intents that people use search engines for.
It also looks like their engine gives a higher weightage to.com sites when the slider is towards "Shopping", and to.org,.edu,.gov sites when it is towards "Researching". For most purposes, I would go with the slider at the extreme end towards "Researching", so I can exclude spam/advertisement sites. But sadly, it looks like that would skip over *many* useful sites which end in.com .
For example, http://howstuffworks.com/ seems to be categorized as a "Shopping" site, presumably due to it's suffix, and doesn't turn up with the slider at the "Researching" end.
The first match of the India-Australia cricket Test series in Bangalore next month will have hi-tech ticketing with the launch of 'Mobile-Ticketing,' a new service that enables cricket fans across the world to book the tickets online. But thats half the fun, since the tickets would be delivered directly to their mobile phones. the service is managed by Spice . The service delives the ticket as a special barcode which can then be scanned by a barcode reader. Sounds simple. Wired reported a similar story a while back.
The (short) article suggests that this could be a big boost to laptop owners, as battery life could be seriously extended if there isn't a big high-speed motor to power constantly.
...I would've thought this is an Enzyte ad.
Talk about subliminal marketing..."This is Bob.
Bob is springing large and laughing easy"... I've gotto mute the TV during those back to back Enzyte commercials during Southpark.
Slashdot Mirror
Given most human opinion, it would appear that anyone with even a slight sense of smell hates the smell of human poo. An article on PooEatersInc, though, argues that not everyone should dismiss the smell and taste of human poo outright. According to Ilov Poo, dog poo is over-rated, cow dung isn't worthy and pure human excrement deserves respect and some love. From the article: 'What has shit given us? It has given us food, sure, it is runny sometimes and the reliability leaves something to be desired (constipation springs to mind) but nothing tastes like a bowl of steaming poo in the morning. No one is even close to the ease of use that poo offers - out of the toilet bowl and into your cereal bowl. Sure, bird droppings are a lot prettier but then it is hard to collect and often leaves stains on your clothes .
...or all over?
OMFG imagine if M$ patent3d teh emot1c0n5!!! th4t wud so SUXXORRZZZ SO B4D!!111!! LOLZZZ WHAT wa5 1 THinKING!!! M$ wudnt do that because that would p1ss of everybuddy and their AOL BUDDIE5 SO B4D!!!
Oh they really did? Never mind.
And I find his GUI better than Google's. It's slicker, and the ability to adjust the transparency (slider at the bottom) is quite innovative. As is also the ability to move the foreground or background and have the other align itself accordingly.
can it emit the brown note?
No matter how secure the core Firefox code is, it is all meaningless with the current extensions model. With the current model (or lack of one) a malicious (or plain buggy) extension can turn Firefox into a bigger threat than IE.
From my understanding, Firefox extensions aren't restricted from doing I/O or listening on sockets/etc. What's to prevent somebody from writing a seemingly harmless extension which silently dumps all activity logs or other information to an outside listener?
A Java type sandbox model, while a reasonable analogy would IMHO be overly restrictive for extensions, which need to be more closely tied into Firefox than most Java applets need to be to do all the cool things that they currently do (eg: the Tabbrowser Extension) .
and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak outbecause I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak outbecause I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
First they DRM'd the software and I did not speak out because I used non-DRM'd software.
Then they came DRM'd the OS and I did not speak out because I stuck to non-DRM'd OS.
Then they DRM'd the firmware and I did not speak out because I used non-DRM'd firmware.
Then they DRM'd the hardware and there was no where to run my non-DRM'd firmware, OS and software.
--Me
Not sure how close it is to the original, but I'm certain the original one is much better if folks are liking it so much.
Good job.
I know Google tracks and logs every search query by IP address, but it's these persistent session pieces like the GMail cookies, "Personalized results" etc, that I find scarier. And what's more, a large number of people tend to use their full names as Email IDs (moreso for an attractive email service like GMail, which can be used as a formal email account for most purposes), which gives Google a way to directly map People Names to Google Searches.
Good reference there :) If I remember right that was the 10 millionth post.
I remember the day when my old Missus had 'er first baby. I didn't go around dialling fancy numbers in any fancy telephone. Just walked up the hill, hollered for the midwife and walked back up home. No sirre, no fancy "Hybrid Telephony" for us back then, and we loved it.
If it did, we would have to call it BitDribble or something.
Even companies are jumping on the "blog bandwagon" by starting "personal blogs" of their upper management. For what purpose, I cannot ascertain, except probably as an advertising avenue.
I hate it when CNN or some major news channel reports "happenings" from the "Blog world" or "Blogosphere" and waste my time, the viewers' and their own....time that could be better spent on reporting something worthwhile (not that they would anyway).
Abusing an opponent in an argument does not construe as being "constructive" in my book. Neither does making strawman suggestions about the opponent's lack of "comprehension and discourse". Welcome to my foes list.
thanks for the laugh.
You really think India is "to blame" for being a poorer country than the US of A and the other Western countries? That and the resulting favorable Exchange Rate is the reason why it's a good deal for Corporations to move their operations to India.
What do you propose they do? Artificially inflate the value of the Rupee, so that it's at par with the US Dollar so their population doesn't "compete unfairly" for American jaabs, and have the resulting rise in the cost-of-living starve out more than 50% of the population who don't earn more than a few Rupees a month?
The whole reason behind the so called "Outsourcing" is the *favorable Exchange Rate* as another poster noted further up in this thread. Unlike the popular notion, the standard-of-living of software developers is *not* lower in the US and China - infact they're among the highest paid technical workers in the market.
I suggest you blame the Corporations who want to put their profits above their ethics, rather than painting blaming a billion people with your "disingenuous/unethical" brush just because they were unfortunate (or fortunate - perspectives may differ) enough to be born into a poorer country.
It also looks like their engine gives a higher weightage to .com sites when the slider is towards "Shopping", and to .org, .edu, .gov sites when it is towards "Researching". For most purposes, I would go with the slider at the extreme end towards "Researching", so I can exclude spam/advertisement sites. But sadly, it looks like that would skip over *many* useful sites which end in .com .
For example, http://howstuffworks.com/ seems to be categorized as a "Shopping" site, presumably due to it's suffix, and doesn't turn up with the slider at the "Researching" end.
Needs more work, IMHO.
How about using cell phones as entry tickets to a Cricket match. From TFA:
The first match of the India-Australia cricket Test series in Bangalore next month will have hi-tech ticketing with the launch of 'Mobile-Ticketing,' a new service that enables cricket fans across the world to book the tickets online. But thats half the fun, since the tickets would be delivered directly to their mobile phones. the service is managed by Spice . The service delives the ticket as a special barcode which can then be scanned by a barcode reader. Sounds simple. Wired reported a similar story a while back.
More details here.
Place said kit in motion on said device and harness generated energy.
The added advantages of this apparatus are it's rapidly diminishing weight and exponentially increasing life with regular use.
If your CEO likes swimming, that is. He'll be forever in debt with you when he sees how he doesn't catch colds that often anymore.
all the cyber people need to support teh AOL in their awesome efforts to make the internets better for everybody.
can't believe you peeps havent seen the cool AOL comercials!!!!111
"want a better internet?"
"you belong to america online!!!"
Talk about subliminal marketing..."This is Bob. Bob is springing large and laughing easy"... I've gotto mute the TV during those back to back Enzyte commercials during Southpark.
Nothing builds character like manually searching megabytes of raw, unorganized information for a relevent entry. Except maybe sorting it by hand.
Databases are for sissies.